PSA on booking cheap tickets

amother

Fri, Aug 23 2024, 3:44 am

I meant to respond to a post a while back but forgot to so I'll just post it here. If an airline is not currently flying to a country but is still selling tickets to that country sometime in the future, I highly discourage you from booking through them. Obviously I don't mean if an airline is very temporarily not flying there due to a sudden weather event. I'm talking about if an airline isn't flying there for major world events with an unpredictable end date. That goes ten times more for budget airlines with frustrating policies, where they may never refund you but only give you money toward another flight with their airline.

Of course, if an airline has an incredible reputation around this, then maybe it makes more sense to take the risk. But even then the reputation is unlikely to help you if you've used a travel agent or third party like Expedia. In that case, even the most reputable airlines often won't be able to help you and you'll have to take it up with whomever you booked through.

I live in Australia (in the time zone where it's not Shabbat yet Wink

) During Covid, we had lots of border closures and a numbers cap on amount of entrants. There were large periods of time where only very few planes were actually bringing people in. This did not stop budget airlines from taking people's money, booking them on flights months out, and then cancelling these flights when those restrictions didn't ease up.

I cannot tell you how many Facebook posts I saw in groups from frustrated people stuck outside the country, spending thousands upon thousands of dollars to try to find their way in, to no avail. I felt so bad for them. So many of these budget airlines just don't care. At a certain point it was heartbreaking to see people continue to try to book with these budget airlines. On top of whatever emergency reason they were trying to travel for (often to visit an extremely sick immediate relative), they were now dealing with significant financial loss, and being sent from one awful customer service rep to another.

My point is, just because an airline is happy to sell you a ticket doesn't mean they know more than you about their ability to fly there at any point in the future. If there's an openended world event happening, please protect yourself and make sure you get full payment back in cash if they cancel, whether through the airline, travel site or agency, or travel insurance, if that's an option. I'd hate for anyone on here to be dealing with that kind of frustration.

Somewhat related, if you're flying through the US and you're ever in this situation, I recently saw Pete Buttigieg tweet something about how there's a legal requirement where airlines must fully refund passengers in cash for cancelled flights or delayed flights or something. I can't recall details, but if you ever think this might apply to you, look into it. I'm not sure if it may even apply to situations where people are flying solely outside of the US but if you're flying only outside the US, still might be worth checking. (Like maybe it's a requirement on airlines themselves if they want to operate in the US, even if a situation doesn't involve the US)?

In the meantime, I just wanted to give out this warning to anyone who wasn't used to this situation. A good deal is only good if you get what you paid for. It's awful if the "deal" money goes straight into the trash, and you may even lose more on unrefundable money you've spent on lodging, because of some unethical business practices.